Lesson 1. Don’t Sunburn Your Legs the Day before the SAT’s
I approach this lesson with extreme pain in the back of both my legs. From the top of my thigh down to the back of my calf, I regret having to learn this lesson. It was nearly 80 at the beach the day before SAT’s and instead of (in my opinion) foolishly sitting inside and studying, I decided to sit outside at the beach and study. Multitasking, right? Getting a tan, while studying?
I wasn’t wearing a swimsuit, I had on my athletic shorts and a t-shirt, it was perfect weather at the beach and when I spread out a towel to lie down on, I knew this was the right decision.
My siblings (I have four of them) for the last five minutes had been hurriedly passing around the sunscreen so that they could get it on and be the first in the water. I, being the mature and patient older sister that I was waited (calmly and politely) for them to be done. When my youngest sister finished using the sunscreen and handed it to me I thanked her nicely and then squeezed the sunscreen out onto my hands.
I have a pattern you see, when I put on sunscreen. First, I do my arms, then my shoulders, then the back of my neck, my ears, my face and then lastly, my legs. There is a problem with this though, as I now have learned, and it’s that by the time I get to the back of my legs, what little sunscreen I had left on my hands for my face, is now gone. (Actually, that is stretching the truth a little, there was enough left on my hand to leave a nice sunscreen handprint which much to my dismay didn’t burn, leaving a gleaming white handprint among the backs of my glowing red legs.) Anyhow, after I finished sun screening myself I lay down on my stomach on the towel and cracked open my Baron’s SAT study guide. Life was good.
Two hours of Baron (and a short nap) later, we were packing up our stuff to go home. As I stood up and prepare to shake my towel off I heard my mom sigh loudly. “You did it again, ----“ She said. (This wasn’t my first time severely burning my legs.) I wrinkled up my nose in distaste and turned my head to see the back of my legs, sure enough, they were red. I puckered my face and didn’t say anything. What are you supposed to say when you burn your legs? “Wow! I think my legs can beat Rudolph’s nose!” or how about, “Burned? That’s not burned! That’s all-natural skin dye!” ….I don’t think so.
The thing about sunburn is it never hurts right away, it’s usually like a mosquito bite. It doesn’t itch until you realize it’s there, and the more you think about it, the more it itches.
Needless to say, I thought about it a lot.
After coming home from the beach I went upstairs to the medicine closet and fished out some lotion to lather all over my burning legs. It felt cool, but it didn’t really help.
Now, there are two pieces of advice my parents always tell me when I get sunburned.
1. Put Aloe Vera on it
2. Drink lots of Water
So I did. After my mom made a quick run to CVS to get the Aloe, I generously applied it to my legs every two hours or so. It was glorious! However, I am getting sidetracked, this is about sunburn and SAT’s not sunburn treatment. Anyway, before I left the next morning I put on the Aloe Vera and packed a generous amount of water bottles (5 maybe?). I was determined to get rid of this sunburn at quickly as possible.
The problem began when I walked into the high school for the test and that it was relatively humid in here. As I sat down at my designated seat, the Aloe Vera on the back of my legs started melting just a little, forming a glue-like paste.
This though didn’t bother me at first, I was fine for the first 20 minutes, then I tried to adjust my legs.
I couldn’t.
The Aloe Vera (which melted into a glue-like paste) turned out to sticky like glue too! My legs stuck, suctioned onto the chair seat by this heaven-sent monstrosity! I tried not to panic, I mean I was fine sitting like this for the last 20 minutes of the test and there was only two hours and 40 minutes left. I should be fine, right?
Here’s where the double hit kicks in, remember advice number 2? Yeah, well they don’t give many breaks in the SAT about four total, but by the time the first one rolled around, I really needed to go. I sat there struggling silently for a moment before I finally jumped up, and with a loud popping sound, my legs unsealed from the seat. Everyone stared at me.
I tried to pretend I was invisible. I slumped over and stared at the ground while I walked to the front of the classroom and out the door. From there I ran and just made it in time. That’s how the rest of the SAT’s went, I sat with my legs suctioned the chair during test time (which was also painful because of the sunburn,) and running to the bathroom during break time.
By the time SAT’s ended I had decided that sunburn, was worse than the SAT’s.